Note 16 — Chapter III · Criticism of The Accepted View

We must remember that this restriction in the recruiting sources of the legionaries was wholly an act of free choice on the part of Augustus, whatever the motive may have been. That suggested by Seeck, l. c., p. 611, does not seem very probable; it involved a change in the usage to which men had already become accustomed in the civil wars, and it was gradually but completely abandoned by his successors. There was nothing in the general conditions which required it.